[Bob-san]

Did you ever read this blog? http://guide2homelessness.blogspot.com/

[jr2]

Hey, I bet you could make a living doing this with other vans and selling them.  An idea? 

[Androgeos Exeunt]

I'm surprised Stealth hasn't posted on this thread yet, but then again, he hardly ever drops by here any more.

[Bob-san]

I'm surprised Stealth hasn't posted on this thread yet, but then again, he hardly ever drops by here any more.

Let's just hope that he didn't get himself killed again.

[Kusanagi]

Had to buy a new refrigerator today

[Nuke]

i spent the last few days living in a tiny travel trailer near where my sister lives. its sort of the guest house. something like 150 square feet if you dont count furniture, cabinets, the lavatory, etc. cant use the water pump or the 12v lighting system while the genny is off. the 12v system used to work at night, but it seems something is broke somewhere (probibly a dead 12v battery). the ceiling is high enough to accommodate my 6'4" height in most places. it is pretty cold at night, i kinda wish it had a propane heater, and it has a kitchen, but no propane tank to run the stove and the water heater kinda froze and busted. still i wouldn't mind living in something like that. of course i only slept there, mostly hung out in the cabin where my sister lives. her house is not yet complete (needs plumbing and drywall) so she lives upstairs in the inlaws cabin, which is equally tiny and up some treacherously steep stairs.

[Liberator]

I lived in a Rolls International '70something model that looked suspiciously like this one for 3 years.

For a Single Guy with no female companionship it wasn't a bad place to live.

[bahijal74]

I will put my opinion simple.
Your the Ultimate Hobo.
EPIC

So how well doe syour laptop run, i assume you play FS2 do you run it at its highest out setting for graphics and what not or do you try to conserve battery by playing for the gameplay alone.
also....How many outlets do you have and od you ever store  food that can spoil in your fridge? (i don't mean like leftovers like cooking type stuff.
Oh and do you ever cook a meal or is it all microwave. if you dont when wa sthe last time you have a  i guess "Home cooked" meal?

[JGZinv]

Hmm in addition to Hilgara, you should do some kind of mod where you fly around in a identical van and have to collect resources.
Combat consists of shooting beams out of the headlights, when you fire the booster the back doors fly open (or a missile barrage),
you fight other vans and cars for supremacy, access to Wiki saturated zones, and the last parking spot at the space diner.

Boss fight is against Eagle 5 from Spaceballs. 

[Rodo]

Boss fight is against Eagle 5 from Spaceballs. 

  nice movie there

[StarSlayer]

I don't suppose you could be convinced to convert your home to also provide CAS?

[Kusanagi]

i spent the last few days living in a tiny travel trailer near where my sister lives. its sort of the guest house. something like 150 square feet if you dont count furniture, cabinets, the lavatory, etc. cant use the water pump or the 12v lighting system while the genny is off. the 12v system used to work at night, but it seems something is broke somewhere (probibly a dead 12v battery). the ceiling is high enough to accommodate my 6'4" height in most places. it is pretty cold at night, i kinda wish it had a propane heater, and it has a kitchen, but no propane tank to run the stove and the water heater kinda froze and busted. still i wouldn't mind living in something like that. of course i only slept there, mostly hung out in the cabin where my sister lives. her house is not yet complete (needs plumbing and drywall) so she lives upstairs in the inlaws cabin, which is equally tiny and up some treacherously steep stairs.

You just described one of the main reasons I live in a van as opposed to a used RV or trailer...too much can go wrong, and we in the vandwelling/bus conversion community lovingly refer to them as "sticks and staples" as they are ridiculously fragile and are very expensive to fix when something goes wrong.

You couldn't plug in somewhere? If you were plugged into 120v shore power then the converter should have run the 12v systems just fine. That's how it's set up in my van.

I will put my opinion simple.
Your the Ultimate Hobo.
EPIC

So how well doe syour laptop run, i assume you play FS2 do you run it at its highest out setting for graphics and what not or do you try to conserve battery by playing for the gameplay alone.
also....How many outlets do you have and od you ever store  food that can spoil in your fridge? (i don't mean like leftovers like cooking type stuff.
Oh and do you ever cook a meal or is it all microwave. if you dont when wa sthe last time you have a  i guess "Home cooked" meal?

Laptop is a 400 dollar POS that barely runs freespace open without lagging to hell. I need to get a new one The solar panels provide all the juice I need to keep it going though, and coffeeshops/Kinkos/Internet cafes all have freely available power for me to use.

I have six outlets in the van. Three of them are always hot if the inverter is on or if I'm plugged in somewhere. The other three are wired to those switches behind the drivers seat. One for the microwave, one for the fridge, and one for the computer outlet/fan in the back. That way I can have the inverter on but no power going to those outlets if I have nothing in the fridge or in the microwave since both use power just by being plugged in.

I tend to buy all my food fresh the day I use it, but the fridge is on a timer to save power. 3 hours off, 1 hour on, seems to keep things in there cool enough. Even so, I don't keep anything in there longer than a day or two (milk, eggs, etc)

I use the stove almost daily, and I enjoy cooking. It takes about an hour and a half to two hours to cook a meal from scratch and clean everything afterwards, but it's a very nice relaxed pace.

I don't suppose you could be convinced to convert your home to also provide CAS?

Haha! Same van as mine, one year newer.

[bahijal74]

So do you have a way of preventing an electrical fire. If one starts it will destroy everything..and that many hot outlets in a hot place is kidn a dangerous. I assume your either lucky about it or you have a way to keep it from happening or at least destroying teh van. Ive seen how truly destructive electrical fires are with my own eyes.

[Nuke]

i spent the last few days living in a tiny travel trailer near where my sister lives. its sort of the guest house. something like 150 square feet if you dont count furniture, cabinets, the lavatory, etc. cant use the water pump or the 12v lighting system while the genny is off. the 12v system used to work at night, but it seems something is broke somewhere (probibly a dead 12v battery). the ceiling is high enough to accommodate my 6'4" height in most places. it is pretty cold at night, i kinda wish it had a propane heater, and it has a kitchen, but no propane tank to run the stove and the water heater kinda froze and busted. still i wouldn't mind living in something like that. of course i only slept there, mostly hung out in the cabin where my sister lives. her house is not yet complete (needs plumbing and drywall) so she lives upstairs in the inlaws cabin, which is equally tiny and up some treacherously steep stairs.

You just described one of the main reasons I live in a van as opposed to a used RV or trailer...too much can go wrong, and we in the vandwelling/bus conversion community lovingly refer to them as "sticks and staples" as they are ridiculously fragile and are very expensive to fix when something goes wrong.

You couldn't plug in somewhere? If you were plugged into 120v shore power then the converter should have run the 12v systems just fine. That's how it's set up in my van.

point google earth to  56°54'47.77"N 132°50'4.31"W, you will see a massive patch of green with very little civilization surrounding it. no place to jack in for 120v there. surely i could run another extension cord to the inverter, its only about 30 yards away, but even then i couldnt do much. most of the buildings there get power from the same generator. theres a shop which also doubles as the movie and game room, the outhouse which only gets a 120v line for the light, then aways away is the cabin, and my sisters house is aways from that, it has a portable genny to run power tools but will eventually be tied to the generator shed. the trailer i was in is kind of behind the cabin behind some trees, and theres a hot tub and sauna around there too (they get lighting off of he cabin's power), and a deck which will eventually become a house, but for now it makes a good place to launch fireworks and rc helicopters. the larger buildings have their own battery arrays and their own inverters. the generator is on from between 6 and 12 hours a day. enough to keep all the chest freezers icy despite being on less than half a day. venison usually keeps about year, i was able to make chili with last fall's kill and nobody got sick from it. the fridge now is a different matter. it stays cold enough but not very. essentially anything that can be frozen is. the fridge is mostly for produce, though its better to just go pick it from the garden.

 i mostly use my ipod for nighttime lighting. the little trailer is a piece of crap now that i think about it. its certainly not designed for this climate. actually a house boat might suit me better up here. i do like the van idea though, just in the wrong part of the world for it. of course if i did get the van (actually a small bus sounds better too, since i could actually stand up), i would probably live down south where its warm most of the time.

[Kusanagi]

So do you have a way of preventing an electrical fire. If one starts it will destroy everything..and that many hot outlets in a hot place is kidn a dangerous. I assume your either lucky about it or you have a way to keep it from happening or at least destroying teh van. Ive seen how truly destructive electrical fires are with my own eyes.

Everything is fused, and the outlets to the fridge and microwave are GFI circuits. The inverter will also have a fuse pop if something draws too much power (learned that the hard way a year ago)

Everything is wired and grounded the way it would be in a house. I purchased a book on household electrical wiring and used it to make sure everything would be up to the same code it would be in a house. Plus, I can simply turn off the inverter and the outlets go dead.

Nuke, that sounds awesome.

[Bob-san]

An idea might be to drive between say New Jersey and Florida; spend the winters in Florida and the summers in Jersey. I'd think the same could be done in California. Anyways, the idea would be to expend the minimum to keep yourself heated or cooled. Besides, many northern areas, especially on the coast, get a lot of tourists and have new life in summer. It might be easier to have a regular job in those conditions.

[Nuke]

i think id be completely lost on the east coast, never been further east than phoenix.

[Trivial Psychic]

What we need is for a whole bunch of FS fans to convert themselves some vans, truck cabs, and RVs, and go on the road together across country, taking camp sites, parking lots, etc.  They can maintain constant wireless chat from van to van on the road, network their laptops together for massive multi-player sessions, hit McDonalds' drive-throughs in a chain and really confuse them.

[Hades]

Hmm in addition to Hilgara, you should do some kind of mod where you fly around in a identical van and have to collect resources.
Combat consists of shooting beams out of the headlights, when you fire the booster the back doors fly open (or a missile barrage),
you fight other vans and cars for supremacy, access to Wiki saturated zones, and the last parking spot at the space diner.

Boss fight is against Eagle 5 from Spaceballs. 

Damn now I have a huge temptation to make a van with large rocket engines, missile pods, solar panels, etc and put it into FreeSpace just for this <_>

[karajorma]

Spaceballs Mod!